Title: THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF DIALECTICAL OBSERVATIONS: ESSAYS BY AND IN HONOR OF DAVID MAYBURY-LEWIS Structuralism and Kabbalah: Sciences of Mysticism or Mystifications of Science?
Abstract: This paper argues that Kabbalah, the generic term for Jewish mysticism, and structuralism, as articulated in anthropology by Claude Levi-Strauss, share a number of unexpected theoretical foundations. These include the idea that surface diversity conceals underlying unity, truth is hidden within a layered model of reality, and linguistic and mathematical relationships constitute elementary structures enabling diverse and seemingly unconnected orders to be correlated with each other systematically. Yet if Kabbalah and structuralism are so similar, does this imply that Kabbalah is scientific or, as David Maybury-Lewis suggests, that structuralism is akin to mysticism? [Stucturalism, Kabbalah, Levi-Strauss, Maybury-Lewis, science and religion, hermeneutics, symbolic anthropology]
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot